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Beef, Brisket Of, Stewed

A slow‑cooked beef brisket stew with vinegar, vegetables, and a brown roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef, Brisket Of, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brisket

  1. Rub the brisket with vinegar and coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it sit for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Place the brisket in a stewpan just large enough to hold it and barely cover with stock or water.

  4. Bring the liquid to a boil and skim off any foam.

Stew

  1. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  2. Add the chopped carrots, turnip, onions, celery, mace, peppercorns, bouquet garni, and additional salt if needed.

  3. Continue to cook slowly for 2½ hours, keeping the stewpan covered.

Make the browned roux

  1. In a separate pan, heat the butter, add the flour, and stir until it turns nut‑brown; set aside until needed.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking in liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity helps tenderise the surface of the meat when rubbed on before cooking.
Butter
Fat that carries the flavour of the browned roux and enriches the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid when browned in butter to form a roux.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the stock as they cook slowly.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after boiling. Foam rising to the surface contains impurities that can make the stock cloudy and taste bitter; skimming keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, vinegar, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, vinegar, carrot, turnip, onion, celery, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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